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The Poop survives

Accu-WeatherHurricane Ike left just five structures standing in Gilchrist, Texas, including this one. The number of deaths is still anyone's guess.

To follow up on yesterday's entry, it appears that the Poop Deck on the seawall in Galveston, Texas, did indeed survive Hurricane Ike. But many other structures did not.

Although it's been nearly a week since Ike made landfall in Texas, the extent of its damage is only now becoming clear. At the time of landfall, the storm did not appear to be a record-breaker. It was only a Category 2 storm, although it was very large in size, and when it came ashore its storm surge was lower than feared.

But it seems hurricane forecasters don't have a truly clear idea about how bad any given storm will truly be. Storms stronger than Ike have done far less damage than this one did. Consider ---- the small town of Gilchrist, Texas, is essentially gone. Of the 1,000 structures in the town, only five remain. Many residents attempted to ride out the storm, but although 34 bodies were found in the Gulf of Mexico, most victims will probably never be found because most of Gilchrist will never be.

And then there's what the remnants of Ike wrought as they sped up through the Midwest last weekend. All told, 7.5 million Americans lost power because of Ike. Although this statement is impossible to verify, some are saying this is the worst weather-related power outage in this country in 15 years.

Our mother, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, a large, modern city, lost power on Sunday and isn't expected to get it back until the next Sunday. Never in our lifetime can we recall Columbus losing power for this long. This is anecdotal, of course, but indicative of just how damaging Ike was. We here on Staten Island should be very grateful that we were only visited by mediocre Tropical Storm Hanna this hurricane season and were spared the wrath of Ike.

Turning to today's weather, we can be brief --- mostly sunny with a mild high temperature around 71. And just wait until overnight Thursday into Friday morning, when temps are expected to drop all the way down to 51. That's jacket weather, folks. Friday's highs may not make it out of the 60s.

But duh, just look at the calendar. This is our most consistent stretch of mild to cool weather to date this season. We're beginning to turn the corner into fall.

Yesterday's extreme temperatures in the contiguous United States --- High: 110 at Death Valley, Calif.; Low: 23 at Wisdom, Mont.